Let's B!tch. I feel it's a healthy release for our roleplay annoyances 2.0

[Song Book]

When you try, you really try to do some nice slow paced slightly romantic 1v1's and cant find anyone who doesn't have a Mature label slapped on it. Or anyone looking for female characters. God darn it just give me something I actually want to do.

[SleepingSilence]

@VoiD Don't jynx it for everyone else man. D:

[SleepingSilence]

@Rain You mean adults (or teens) roleplaying teens? Or teens that roleplay in general? o.o

[StrangerDanger]

@SleepingSilence

The former, wolfy dear.

[SleepingSilence]

@RainAlright, I mean if it fits the setting better, why not? I know most people prefer to play younger or the same/similar age because they know more about it and it's better to write what you know. I suppose it might be annoying due to overuse? But I mean if the character behaves like a shitty teen would it be better if their age were to be in their 30's?

[VKAllen]

When you try, you really try to do some nice slow paced slightly romantic 1v1's and cant find anyone who doesn't have a Mature label slapped on it. Or anyone looking for female characters. God darn it just give me something I actually want to do.

@Song Book

PM me your interests. I could do slow paced.

[tsukune]

<Snipped quote>

I've had good and bad experiences with teen RPs, but I think my big complaint with them is people tend to want to emphasize the stuff I don't focus on when I roleplay. I.E. most emphasis goes into romantic pursuits or something else I never cared about when I was a teenager for some reason.

@Shorticus

I don't mind playing teen characters - in fact, I do like exploring that psychological-emotional aspect where a teen's mindset is somewhere between a kid and adult, having to juggle between developing a sense of maturity and the unwillingness to lose their innocent childish side. Sure, adults in their later years who have been through all sorts of hell can contribute to their (overly) complicated background, but who says that can't be applied to a teen who will go through the psychological and emotional turmoil before they enter the world of an uncertain adult life? Also, unlike a "mature" adult who knows how to stand their own ground, a teen may be more easily influenced by their environment and peers, inciting cases of impulsive moments and forced to make difficult choices, which can change them for the better...or worse.

Don't forget, the teen years do make up a part of an adult's backstory, and also hold importance in developing the adult to who they are by then.

As for romance, I do agree that it's overdone - no offense to romanticists or people who simply can't move the plot forward without all the juicy romantic/lustful actions, but not everyone wants to pursue a lovey-dovey relationship in their teen years. Even if the teen has a crush on someone, it's 50-50 whether they will act on that feeling, or simply push it aside and prioritize other things in their life (studies, peer pressure, family, other personal interests, etc).

[Shorticus]

<Snipped quote by Shorticus>

I don't mind playing teen characters - in fact, I do like exploring that psychological-emotional aspect where a teen's mindset is somewhere between a kid and adult, having to juggle between developing a sense of maturity and the unwillingness to lose their innocent childish side. Sure, adults in their later years who have been through all sorts of hell can contribute to their (overly) complicated background, but who says that can't be applied to a teen who will go through the psychological and emotional turmoil before they enter the world of an uncertain adult life? Also, unlike a "mature" adult who knows how to stand their own ground, a teen may be more easily influenced by their environment and peers, inciting cases of impulsive moments and forced to make difficult choices, which can change them for the better...or worse.

Don't forget, the teen years do make up a part of an adult's backstory, and also hold importance in developing the adult to who they are by then.

@tsukune

I get all this. As I said, I've had both good and bad experiences with them. But most folks emphasize romance, or else REALLY want to push a high school slice of life setting (in which romance inevitably happens). There are twists and tweaks on it, but most folks don't RP anything beyond what I'd call a typical perception of the teenage experience.

Now, the teenage years are very important. But the rest of life is important, too, equally so. But we don't see people RPing about being outright kids very often, nor do we often see folks RPing about being old men and women or even middle-aged unless they're already getting on in years. I feel like the reasons for teenaged and early twenties characters being the focus of most people's roleplay has a lot to do with the romantic and sex appeal of such characters (besides the typical "power fantasy" stuff). Old people are "squicky" in this context and a lot of roleplayers are on the younger (30 years or younger) side - certainly not all roleplayers, mind you.

Child characters... I figure most people find playing a kid to be weird or beneath them or maybe would just rather play a character whose interests can realistically involve sex. Plus, child characters come loaded with a crapton of limitations we don't want to deal with when we roleplay, like having to listen to to their parents, like having curfews, like having to do homework, like being unable to fight the big bads, like being pretty much disadvantaged in a ton of ways while also having a few unique options available to them. Basically, a child character makes you weaker, and there's a very real want for roleplay to give us a feeling of power or independence. Roleplay can be very self-expressive.

As for romance, I do agree that it's overdone - no offense to romanticists or people who simply can't move the plot forward without all the juicy romantic/lustful actions, but not everyone wants to pursue a lovey-dovey relationship in their teen years. Even if the teen has a crush on someone, it's 50-50 whether they will act on that feeling, or simply push it aside and prioritize other things in their life (studies, peer pressure, family, other personal interests, etc).

Word.

When I was in high school, I was... very busy with everything. I was socially active, had lots of tabletop games I was involved in, had online gaming sucking my time away, was working on personal stories, was the football team's waterboy, competed frequently in the school's academic contests, worked on the school newspaper, helped the Student Council collect cardboard boxes for some charity thing or another, etc. I was mildly interested in ladies, but frankly? I was too busy to think about them, and I learned AFTER high school that a couple girls had actually been interested in me throughout high school and I just was too absorbed with everything else to notice. I was a busy guy.

Point being: I never into the whole lovey-dovey thing.

And some people are just not very sexual beings. I mean... Myself? I think about sex and I think "Eh." There's nothing especially exciting about it to me. I don't spend very many, if any, waking hours thinking about the subject. I love the idea of romance and having someone be very close to me and sharing my feelings with them. I'd love to wake up next to that someone, certainly. But the idea of sex itself just bores me, and I've never been all that enthused by amorous acts. I frankly don't get the sex drive a lot of people have. So, when people want to roleplay about sex sex sex, I honestly have no enthusiasm for the subject matter at all and have zero interest in getting involved in that. And... well, a lot of RPers that want to RP about "romance" throw in words like "mature" and want some saucy typing. It's not my cup of tea, and it's especially not my cup of tea when we're dealing with teenagers.

(In fact, I once wound up leaving a gaming group because I was playing a female character and everyone just assumed my character should be romantically involved with one of the male ones. It got pretty stifling.)

[Mixtape Ghost N]

In terms of romance, other than making jokes, I just let it happen.

[Penryn]

Group roleplays seems to be more understanding of this scenario but in one-on-one's? Oh boy.

"If you're not longer interested in the roleplay, please let me know! Don't flake out and disappear without a word. It's rude to leave me hanging. I won't hold it against you."

>Person lets partner know they are withdrawing for their roleplay.
>Partner passive aggressively rants about it on status updates or threads like these.

Okay.

[NuttsnBolts]

Group roleplays seems to be more understanding of this scenario but in one-on-one's? Oh boy.

"If you're not longer interested in the roleplay, please let me know! Don't flake out and disappear without a word. It's rude to leave me hanging. I won't hold it against you."

>Person lets partner know they are withdrawing for their roleplay.
>Partner passive aggressively rants about it on status updates or threads like these.

'k.

@Penryn

I think it's more a desire to not hurt the other persons feelings by saying "you've and I have created a very crap story. I want out"

In saying that, group ones can be just as bad. I've made a few RPs where they just didn't play out right and things have happened so I've closed them off. Its harsh as a gm when no one replies too cause you wonder if you've made a big mistake somewhere.

[Penryn]

<Snipped quote by Penryn>

I think it's more a desire to not hurt the other persons feelings by saying "you've and I have created a very crap story. I want out"

In saying that, group ones can be just as bad. I've made a few RPs where they just didn't play out right and things have happened so I've closed them off. Its harsh as a gm when no one replies too cause you wonder if you've made a big mistake somewhere.

@NuttsnBolts

How they interpret my leave is on them and even so, I always give a good reason but the majority just can't take it and they become bitter to highly potentially interested players whom also leave because of their newfound attitude. Apparently, it's a universal theme on roleplaying forums so I'm just talking in terms of my last experience on a different forum.

With what happened to you, was it just that everyone flaked out on you? What happened? I doubt you did something wrong otherwise you wouldn't've gone out of your way to format many group roleplays to see which one is a hit or miss so don't blame it on yourself; commitment issues apply as much in roleplaying as they do in the real world!

[NuttsnBolts]

<Snipped quote by NuttsnBolts>

How they interpret my leave is on them and even so, I always give a good reason but the majority just can't take it and they become bitter to highly potentially interested players whom also leave because of their newfound attitude. Apparently, it's a universal theme on roleplaying forums so I'm just talking in terms of my last experience on a different forum.

With what happened to you, was it just that everyone flaked out on you? What happened? I doubt you did something wrong otherwise you wouldn't've gone out of your way to format many group roleplays to see which one is a hit or miss so don't blame it on yourself; commitment issues apply as much in roleplaying as they do in the real world!

@Penryn

Two come to mind, but in both I had established a world, collected players and characters who fitted pretty well and started up the roleplay. After a couple of post people just stopped, with one person stating that they didn't know what they wanted to do with their character.

It's at that point where I would ask people to be creative. Build the world a little bit and explore their characters, but it seems like some people don't understand how to use their own creativity outside of character sheet building. Create an enemy, have a conflict with another player, hear about a secret in the world... just anything is better than nothing.

If I could sum it up it's motivation. Some people just simply don't know what motivates a character, what makes them tick, what they want to achieve. The more characters I have created (been in a lot of RPs) the more I realise that it's a key factor to their growth.

[tsukune]

<Snipped quote by tsukune>

I get all this. As I said, I've had both good and bad experiences with them. But most folks emphasize romance, or else REALLY want to push a high school slice of life setting (in which romance inevitably happens). There are twists and tweaks on it, but most folks don't RP anything beyond what I'd call a typical perception of the teenage experience.

Now, the teenage years are very important. But the rest of life is important, too, equally so. But we don't see people RPing about being outright kids very often, nor do we often see folks RPing about being old men and women or even middle-aged unless they're already getting on in years. I feel like the reasons for teenaged and early twenties characters being the focus of most people's roleplay has a lot to do with the romantic and sex appeal of such characters (besides the typical "power fantasy" stuff). Old people are "squicky" in this context and a lot of roleplayers are on the younger (30 years or younger) side - certainly not all roleplayers, mind you.

Child characters... I figure most people find playing a kid to be weird or beneath them or maybe would just rather play a character whose interests can realistically involve sex. Plus, child characters come loaded with a crapton of limitations we don't want to deal with when we roleplay, like having to listen to to their parents, like having curfews, like having to do homework, like being unable to fight the big bads, like being pretty much disadvantaged in a ton of ways while also having a few unique options available to them. Basically, a child character makes you weaker, and there's a very real want for roleplay to give us a feeling of power or independence. Roleplay can be very self-expressive.

@Shorticus

And some people are just not very sexual beings. I mean... Myself? I think about sex and I think "Eh." There's nothing especially exciting about it to me. I don't spend very many, if any, waking hours thinking about the subject. I love the idea of romance and having someone be very close to me and sharing my feelings with them. I'd love to wake up next to that someone, certainly. But the idea of sex itself just bores me, and I've never been all that enthused by amorous acts. I frankly don't get the sex drive a lot of people have. So, when people want to roleplay about sex sex sex, I honestly have no enthusiasm for the subject matter at all and have zero interest in getting involved in that. And... well, a lot of RPers that want to RP about "romance" throw in words like "mature" and want some saucy typing. It's not my cup of tea, and it's especially not my cup of tea when we're dealing with teenagers.

@Shorticus

Word. We're like minds indeed.

I don't hate romance - in fact, when people come together and build bonds with one another, it's natural for the feelings go beyond mere friendship and the characters would ponder about going further as they become closer together. It can help to develop the characters collectively as they try to sort out the increasing complication of their relationship with one another.

...Until some people misinterpret that closeness as an opportunity to jump the sex wagon.

Romance =/= sex, period. Romance is the psychological-emotional bond the characters share with each other; sex is simply to satisfy personal lust (unless you're hellbent to get babies, that's a different story).

Regarding child characters, I think it also has got to do with the whole "mature" mindset. Other than all the sex and "power fantasy" stuffs, most players probably have this conscious/subconscious thinking of wanting their characters to have a certain edge over everyone else's - that's where the idea of "maturity" comes to play. Just like you said, the idea of playing childish, simple-minded, weak characters don't appeal to them... But in a roleplay that focuses on adventure and exploration, it's much funnier and more exciting to have a group of rowdy kids than...a bunch of angsty teens.

[NuttsnBolts]

@Shorticus

Romance =/= sex, period. Romance is the psychological-emotional bond the characters share with each other; sex is simply to satisfy personal lust.

Regarding child characters...

@tsukune

So at the moment in an RP I'm in we have a running joke that it's basically a harem, due to the number of female character we initially started off with (it has balanced out though), but at no point can I see two character hitting it off. We have one character with a child support character, one with a young teen sibling support character and our oldest Player character is in her late 50's. It comes across as a balanced, well thought out world where characters appear with different dynamics and the children actually help emphasise the traits of the older main character. However I will admit that this dynamic doesn't work for every roleplay.

I dunno... when it comes to sex in an RP, I have to agree with @Shorticus. I've read a few Smuts to see if it was something I'd get into, and honestly it just felt weird enough reading it, let alone writing about it! There's ways to do romance that doesn't lead to sex and I think the best way to describe it is with a picture, that I wont link, where it has two comparison images of 1950 and 2015 titled "first date" with the older date having a silhouette of a man with flowers and kissing the girl, and the 2015 comparison was a girl on her knees sucking him off.

Why do I bring that up?

I actually think many people can't do romance without sex. A breakdown in communication over the years and publicity through media, internet, hyperactive teens, and ease in available porn sites has confused people into thinking that romance is created through sex, rather sex is created through romance. I know that sounds a bit philosophical but proof can be seen in how popular a book like 50 shades of grey was, a story about a girl's sexual desires.

[Shorticus]

I actually think many people can't do romance without sex. A breakdown in communication over the years and publicity through media, internet, hyperactive teens, and ease in available porn sites has confused people into thinking that romance is created through sex, rather sex is created through romance. I know that sounds a bit philosophical but proof can be seen in how popular a book like 50 shades of grey was, a story about a girl's sexual desires.

@NuttsnBolts

That's a really interesting statement. I'm not sure just how much I agree, but I would say that your statement carries some weighty truth.

Now, I don't think this is a modern phenomenon necessarily. I think it's very human to relate sex and love. After all, sex is the act through which babies are made, and creating a family with someone is typically seen as, well, love. I'd go so far as to argue that our modern world has allowed us to separate sex and love: we are more able than ever thanks to the invention of things like birth control pills to partake in sexual activities without actually procreating. I'm not saying it was impossible to do so before, or that forms of birth control didn't exist in the past, but the modern era is well suited for allowing us to control birth. Tack on the fact that the modern era is the first era historically in which nations are secular (I.E. religion and the state are no longer associated with one another), religious restrictions on sex have been effectively lifted.

The trouble is that so much emphasis is put on the sexual aspects of romance. That is but one facet of a relationship. When two people decide to dedicate themselves to one another, they have a crapload of questions to answer. Are they exclusive? What does their relationship together mean? How will they share responsibilities? Will they have children? When will they have children? Is this a long-term thing or just a fun excursion? And both persons will bring different assumptions to these questions and more into the relationship; both people will have their own ideas of what their life together will be like. These assumptions and the wants and needs of the two partners will inevitably cause them to have points of contention in their relationship... most of which will never, ever actually be solved.

Roleplayers are especially prone to this fault. Whether I see it in MMO RP or on a forum, I always see people A) emphasizing sex and B) not actually roleplaying out the downs in a relationship. I know this isn't a universal thing; I know there are roleplayers who can write romance. But sometimes it seems as if the pretense of finding each other is a mere formality in these roleplays and they jump straight to doin' the deed. And there's rarely, if ever, a roleplay in which romance is platonic.

And again: I know that sex is very much part of the human condition. At the very least, it's important in the sense that none of us would exist if not for our parents getting naughty. I also know a ton of people view it as a sort of physical and emotional ecstasy, or at least as really freakin' fun. Still, damn it, you can have romance without sex. They are not one and the same. They are related, and they can come hand in hand, but they are NOT the same.

I don't hate romance - in fact, when people come together and build bonds with one another, it's natural for the feelings go beyond mere friendship and the characters would ponder about going further as they become closer together. It can help to develop the characters collectively as they try to sort out the increasing complication of their relationship with one another.

...Until some people misinterpret that closeness as an opportunity to jump the sex wagon.

@tsukune

Word. Word.

(Word is a good word.)

It's not necessary for that wagon to be jumped, but frankly that's the goal of a lot of RPers. It's a quest of sorts to get the character into sexual interaction ASAP. I remember this one guy on the City of Heroes Virtue server who made it a goal of his to get his character to bone every character he possibly could - and as soon as he did so, he sort of just moved on to the next person.

And something that I've also noticed and don't think has been brought up yet is how possessive some roleplayers can be when romance and characters having sex becomes a thing. On WoW's Wyrmrest Accord server, there's this creepy idea that's floated around in the past that two players whose characters are romantically involved need to be in a sort of relationship themselves. I'm not sure if this is still the case, but when I played there it was very much part of the roleplaying culture on the server: you were supposed to be emotionally invested in your character's romantic interactions with another character, and people would get super pissed off out of character if they learned that someone-or-other was having their character in a relationship with someone that wasn't theirs. It gets... weird, and it made me glad I didn't get involved in that.

But the worst part about it all is there's NO way when you're writing smutty stuff to actually know what the age of the other person involved is. Hell, let me reveal something that I hate talking about: when I was a Freshamn or Sophomore in High School, someone who later turned out to be much older than me tried to pressure me into essentially writing smut with them. As I said, I'm not a very sexual being to begin with; but the manipulation involved was just... deplorable. And I knew people that just took it on word that the people they were roleplaying sexual encounters with were adults. (Guess what: they sometimes weren't.) And... Yeah. Etcetera. I don't think I need to go on.

So, beyond my not being a very sexual being, I've got some beef with folks that go into RP with the goal of "get the cybers." And I hate saying that because, again, sex is a human thing, and the desire to experience it or write about it isn't unusual. But... Gah. There's just so many reasons this topic bugs me.

Sorry. This turned into a full-on rant. I didn't intend that, folks.

[Sombrero]

@Shorticusbut proof can be seen in how popular a book like 50 shades of grey was, a story about a girl's sexual desires.

@NuttsnBolts

A girl's? This could be the Twilight victim in me speaking, but the premise seems far more like something an upper-class 50-year-old woman would crank out in her large amounts of free time.

[SleepingSilence]

@Shorticus I certainly agree with the sentiment over the forcing or the over use of romance and sexual things into anything medium can turn me off. It's often used VERY cheaply as a gimmick, like on T.V shows are our ratings plummeting? We'll have one character randomly turn gay or bi with a friend they shared no romantic connection with whatsoever. That will boost ratings! Or just two friend characters randomly becoming a couple in general. (I've just seen the former example more often lately.)

It's just as one example I've seen sexualization absolutely butcher story telling. It's very difficult to write a sexual scene without being cringe inducingly awful. And yeah, some people can be very manipulative, I've sort of experienced something similar to that effect. I've honestly never really cared about romantic sides of stories personally, but I know I'm in the minority there.

[NuttsnBolts]

<Snipped quote by NuttsnBolts>

A girl's? This could be the Twilight victim in me speaking, but the premise seems far more like something an upper-class 50-year-old woman would crank out in her large amounts of free time.

@Sombrero

Probably true, but I do know some younger girls who were reading the books too.

[Mixtape Ghost N]

<Snipped quote by Sombrero>

Probably true, but I do know some younger girls who were reading the books too.

@NuttsnBolts

God help their souls.